A Cognitive Model of Social Influence

Greg Trafton, NRL

Malcolm McCurry, NRL

Kevin Zish, GMU

Laura Hiatt, NRL

Sunny Khemlani, NRL

Abstract

We describe two different cognitive process models of a well known
experiment on social influence (Salganik, Dodds, & Watts, 2006). One model, the
social influence model, reproduced the choices that participants took by modeling
both the cognitive processes the participant engaged in and the social influences
that the participant saw. The second model, the pure cognitive model, used only
cognitive capabilities and did not model any social influences that the
participant saw. Somewhat surprisingly, the two models showed no difference in
quality of fit (the pure cognitive model actually fit slightly better than the
social influence model), suggesting that social influence models should take
cognitive functions into account in their theories.